Archive for April, 2010

According to sites here in Greece, Liverpool have agreed to allow Nemeth to stay with us for one more season. Fabulous news! All that remains is for Nemeth himself to agree, and while nothing official has been said, he has stated in the past that he would have no problem with staying for another year.

In other news, Blanco will not be playing this sunday against Olympiakos! Instead, Pavlis will be part of them team being brought to Karaiskaki.

So AEK365 (sorry, only Greek link available at the moment) has got some info regarding our new kits for the upcoming season. I can’t guarantee how true it is though I’m assuming it is. Anyways, good news in my opinion! We will be returning to the Yellow and Black stripes we saw with Nike in the 2002 season. Personally, I’ve always liked these kits and thought they looked very sharp with stripes in those colours, and I don’t think these ones will disappoint, at least not in comparison to what we’ve seen in recent years.

The kit will look like the kit below (The Ghana national team kit).

Ghana National Team Kit- Possible template for AEK?

A photoshopped version of our new kit. NOTE: This is not official.

The kits should be available in July. Our second kit (it looks like we will only have two this season instead of three) will be blue I believe, though I’m not certain.

According to the Belgian press we are interested in buying the Dutch player Sherjill MacDonald. The 25 year old striker is playing for Belgian club Germinal Beerschot and scored 4 times in 29 games this season and had 7 assists. Not very impressive figures, he admits himself: “it was not a succesful season, I’m going to work very hard this summer to show everybody that I can do much better next season”. MacDonald was raised as a player by Ajax Amsterdam, but never made it to the first team. He played for a number of teams, including Belgian powerhouse Anderlecht and HSV Hamburg. I really don’t know what to think of this. MacDonald is not a bad player, but maybe we should look voor more quality than he can offer.

First of all, it’s been a while since I lasted posted and quite a bit has happened since then.

Well, we beat Tripolis in our last regular season game, 2-0 at home. A rather eventful game in fact so I’ll go through some of it here.

We started with a different line up than what was being predicted by most, the main reason for this being the fact that several players (Scocco, Blanco, Araujo, Arce, Saja, Roger, and others) were out partying two nights before the game until the early morning hours. Naturally, Bajevic found out about this and benched all of them, including Roger who was set to have his first start with the team since December. Unfortunate for him, but I support Bajevic’s decision completely. Only two weeks before the playoffs and the last thing we need is our players partying during the week before important games.

Another thing worth mentioning is that before the game a large gathering which I attended, was held in Nea Filadelfia on the street outside our old stadium. Around 2,000 AEK fans showed up. A decent number, sure, but hopefully we will see far more in the future. Several former players including the great goalkeeper Elias Atmatsidis showed up and gave speeched discussing the team’s past and its current situation.

The general feelings regarding our management were not happy ones since only days before Adamidis gave a press conference in which he stated that Scocco is for sale, including to Greek teams (Panathinaikos, Olympiakos…). Rightfully so, the fans were not happy about this. Afterall, AEK has never sold a player to either PAO or Oly. Unfortunately though, Adamidis was not predicting (or maybe he was…) as large an uprising among the supporters and before we knew it AEK was once again a team surrounded by controversy as we were before the Christmas break.

Back to the game. Things started well for us generally. Tripolis rarely gave us trouble and we were creating chances, but not scoring when we should have been. Eventually though, Djebbour finally broke the deadlock. However, later on in the game Bajevic decided to introduce Scocco as a sub (most people believe he did this on purpose) which immediately led to half the fans booing the player and another half singing his name, trying all they could to support him. Just minutes later, the Originals began rioting and were soon making their way towards the VIP section. Eventually the Riot squad came into the stadium to protect Adamidis and others however, anyone who knows the Originals knows that bringing the Riot police into the mix is only going to make things worse. All of a sudden hundreds of fans started charging the police and many minor fights broke out leading to some injuries. The rioting carried on throughout the game and even for a while after it. The ref was forced to pause the match for approximately ten minutes as the fighting spilled onto the pitch. He did eventually continue the match though and late in extra time Kafes scored another goal for AEK (without many of the fans even realizing the game had started again) making the score 2-0. The game ended that way and Kostas Manolas received the MVP award. Not one player out there deserved the award more than him. Every game he is constantly proving fans and management what he is capable of as he continues to consistently play like a center-back that’s been playing the game professionally for a decade rather than a year or so.

Well, up next is the playoffs and they are approaching rather quickly. In fact, we play our first game this Wednesday against PAOK in OAKA. I personally believe we will take this one if the players and fans can focus on the match for ninety minutes rather than whats happening behind the scenes. PAOK are no longer anything special (though they did win their last game 4-1 against Ergotelis) and while we mustn’t underestimate them, if we play the best we can we should be able to leave OAKA with a positive result.

Now I would like to take a minute to apologize to any readers who use this site frequently. Over the next three weeks I will be taking my end of year exams. These will be my final high school exams since I will be going to University next year and it is these exams that the Universities focus on most when making a decision, so I will not have as time as will like to update the site. I will still be going to the games so I will try to update as frequently as possible, but I can’t guarantee anything for these next three weeks. However, after the 24th of May, I will be more free than ever and I promise to update the site then as soon as something worthwhile pops up in the news or something regarding the transfers. I will be away at times during the summer however even then I will try and update as often as possible to make up for these past few weeks and the upcoming weeks.

We left Livadia last night with one point from a draw, enough to seal us fourth place as Aris fall 2-1 to Tripolis. Nothing spectacular really but a game worth commentating on regardless.

So, despite the 0-0 scoreline, both teams had some considerable chances to get a few in the net with the majority of them coming from Levadeiakos in the first half. The game has sort of left me now since its been a few days so I can’t remember too many specifics but I know that Saja stood out! Made some fantastic and critical saves to keep us in the game and had it not been for him (and some rather poor finishing from the Levadeiakos players) the score would have definately been in favor of Levadeiakos.

We lined up with Saja in nets, Georgeas, Majstorovic, Majstorovic, and Araujo in defense, Kafes, Gentzoglou, and Makos in the midfield and Manduca up front behind Nemeth and Djebbour (yes, no Blanco in the starting lineup!…. maybe resting him for the far more important playoffs). Majstorovic generally got poor ratings but I thought he had a decent game, though certainly nothing outstanding. Manolas and Araujo both had very good games though and Manolas seems to be getting better and better by the day.

Makos played alright compared to what we’ve seen at other times in the season. For the most part it seemed as if he was actually trying and while he didn’t do anything spectacular he at least didn’t mess up nearly as often as usual.

Nemeth looked good from what I saw and the chemistry between him and Djebbour seemed alright and should only improve (by the way, no new news with regards to Nemeth and next season).

Honestly not much more to say about this game, no point really in going on about it as we have the much more important playoffs coming up.

Anyways, week after week of games since the ban was put in place and the police finally decide they are going to actually enforce it this one game… when AEK are playing! I certainly agree they should enforce the ban if it is there (though I dont believe it should be there in the first place since AEK fans have caused no trouble at all this season) but they should enforce it at all games or none, rather than a select few (or in this case, a select one).

The saying “If there’s a will there’s a way” truly applies when talking about AEK supporters… an unfinished house looking right over the stadium was owned by AEK fans (from what I heard) and they invited in about 50 or 100 AEK supporters who set up banners on the balconies and started singing louder than the handful of Levadeiakos “Ultras”. Great to see them not give up when it comes to supporting AEK, but unfortunately a handful got arrested… even some who were watching the match at a cafe wearing AEK shirts.

An incident occurred after the match involving Georgeas and Levadeiakos owner Kobotis. Apparently, as Georgeas was giving an interview Kobotis walked by and asked “Where does AEK find the money to offer you bonuses?” (obviously bitter since his team will soon be playing 2nd division football). Georgeas replies with “Where do you find your money?” since its generally believed that Xanthi and Levadeiakos have been “involved” with Olympiakos. Kobotis replied with some very nasty language (too nasty to say on here)… to think that we want our league to advance when people like that are running the teams makes me laugh.

Reports coming out of Greece suggest that the upcoming match with Levadeiakos has been fixed. Levadeiakos are in a fight for survival and currently only sit one point above the relegation zone and some are saying that AEK will let them win this match so they stay up. Many betting companies (both in Greece and abroad) have started giving some pretty crazy odds such as around 1.95 (or lower) for Levadeiakos and 3.00 (some places are giving odds as high as 4.00) for an AEK win. As a result, betting on this match has been dis-allowed by OPAP and many other sites.

Why would we give away this match?? I have no idea. If PAOK and Olympiakos win on Sunday they will again go higher up in the playoff standings I believe. Why would we want this? No clue. Also, Aris are still quite close behind us and a loss would mean things would get tighter between the two teams and would see us lose any extra points in the playoffs.

I don’t know what to see, I really don’t. Of course, none of this has been anything close to confirmed and is rather just speculation from various sites, but who knows… this is Greece after-all. I do hope it isn’t true though. I’m going to be heading up to Livadia for this one and really do not want to see us lose and I really do not want to see our name involved with any match fixing scandals, ever.

By the way, it looks like we will have a few players out in the end. Scocco, Jahic, Karabelas, and one other (I can’t remember who) will be out with cards. Blanco had an injury during the week but will be fit for the match. Bajevic was apparently experimenting with him at right midfield. WHY!?!? He’s finally starting to score a couple of goals (and is our top scorer in Livadia).